A topic that deserves to be talked about, and for that reason we should subject morally attractive propositions to more scrutiny, not less.

I
hope the use of “horrendous” and “despicable” (the source story, still at a slightly lower DEFCON, settles for“disgusting”)
stand out, as well as the dogmatic assumption that statistical
disparities alone demonstrate discrimination. My point is not that
sexism may or may not play a part in the wage disparities that Game
Developer Magazine's data allegedly documents, and it definitely
isn't that the industry shouldn't pay matching salaries to male and
female employees with the same experience and skill sets. Rather, I'm
writing to challenge the uncritical assumptions on which both stories
are built, and way that the opportunity to publicly sit on the side
of the angels seems to contribute to the error. Because both stories
note that Game Developer Magazine's numbers offer no information on
the years of experience specific to the men and women surveyed, but
then arbitrarily banish any serious consideration of alternative
explanations from the realm of possibility in order to prescribe the
usual preferential policies.

“There
will be factors, certainly,” RPS writes. “The hugely larger
numbers of men in the industry means by nature there will be many
more of them who have worked for longer, and thus secured ultimately
higher salaries. But there are women who have been involved for a
long time too, and this absolutely doesn’t explain away these
massive discrepancies.”

I
trust that the sheer absurdity of the argument speaks for itself.

Similarly,
BorderHouseBlog says, “I’m sure there are more details that might
make these numbers less damning. For example, we all know that
games have been long dominated by men and the industry is taking
small steps to change that. As a result, many of the women who
answered the survey might be new to the game industry, might not be
in as senior of roles as the men who responded.” And then, in a
comically clumsy attempt at sleight of hand, BorderHouseBlog
continues: “However, I don’t think this changes the fact that we
need to recruit and encourage more women at all levels of every
organization — and we’re failing to do so.”

In
other words, the writer acknowledges that while the evidence she
predicated her argument on cannot support her claim, we are to accept
that that now discarded claim is relevant to another new and
equally unsubstantiated claim, no burden of proof required.

And
next come the aforementioned prescriptions for preferential policies.
As RPS has it, “the
only valid response is for those in senior positions at publishers
and developers to not pretend it isn’t them, to look at their own
figures, and to rectify discrepancies.”

This
is ridiculous. Since when do we draw conclusions without a scrap of
empirical evidence, admit that we lack an argument to stand on, and
then issue moral imperatives, demanding that the accused address
wrongs for which they haven't actually been convicted? We haven't
even determined with certainty whether or not there are
discrepancies, let alone ascertained causes should their existence be
confirmed. Anyone attempting to explain why more men than women work
in a particular industry (indeed a question well worth the
investigative effort) has laborious analytical work ahead of them.
But it's easier for ideologues to attack potential bogeymen and
behave as though they've done their part to change undesirable
circumstances than bother to consult the work of those who do such as
Cornell professor of economics Francine D. Blau.

Again,
to my point, it's all a muddle of poor thinking in the race to
righteous outrage. If you were among “those
in senior positions at publishers and developers” and believed you
could pay group A some fraction of the wages that you pay group B and obtain precisely the same results, plus stand to benefit
politically from appearances in the bargain, why would your hiring
practices not understandably favor group A at all times, especially
in the current economic environment?

Similarly,
all of BorderHouseBlog's prescriptions assume that any statistical
discrepancies, should they be discovered, are prima facie the result
of sexist policies and, as such, can be eliminated entirely by
employers: “Leadership: look at your organization. Compare the
salaries of the women to the men who work at your company, and align
their salaries. If all of your women are junior, evaluate them. How
long have they been junior? Are they deserving of an increase in
role, capabilities, and salary?”

These
are fine policies to follow – notwithstanding the seeming
suggestion that employers arbitrarily align salaries according to
gender status irrespective of employment history, skill set, hours
worked, etc. (In other words, even if an employee has three years of
experience and is due for advancement, this will do nothing to
equalize salaries if a significant proportion of her male coworkers
have fifteen or more years experience a piece.) On their own,
however, these fine questions aren't enough. We must also study the
male-female ratio among qualified candidates from whom studios
receive applications. We must ask what percentage of women pursue
educations in programming? What percentage of women whose salaries we
survey are married? (Academic women who never married average
slightly higher incomesthan male counterparts.) How many of the women whose salaries we survey
take extended time off for maternity leave? (Different occupations
have different rates of obsolescence for their respective skills, so
that interruptions of careers in some fields are more damaging to
one's career than in other fields.) And the answers that these
inquiries yield prompt more pressing questions.

This
is a topic that deserves to be talked about, and for that reason we should
subject morally attractive propositions to more scrutiny, not less.

26 comments:

Great post. I agree entirely.I have similar thoughts on violence in games. Is it possible to have a real discussion about whether or not we want most of the games we play to be violent teenage power fantasies? Even if we decide there's no correlation with real world violence, isn't it boring after a while? Does the fact that politicians cry out against it mean we need to instinctively rally around it and pledge our allegiance to head shots?

I appreciate the points raised in this post and they are well stated. I can't help but feel that any argument against people using statistics and research poorly is a little pointless. It's unfortunate that this is the norm, and doubly so when it's used to attack the boogieman as you pointed out.

I have to wonder if a piece like this means anything to people that don't already see the issues.

One hopes the person who presented the industry data chose the most representative picture, but we can't speak confidently until we have some medians and standard deviations!--and just more data in general.

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